16th September 2008, 06:24 PM
The way commercial archaeology is designed means that research questions are generally not being answered. That is not to say that many large archaeological excavations will not provide useful results which will help at least occasionally, perhaps on a regional or national level. However, if you were for example working on a site in a medieval borough then a simple thing such as recording the widths of the burgage plots could be very useful for anyone studying the growth of that particlar town. However, if your site boundary lies two metres from said burgage plots, tough, question remains unanswered. Also, ask yourself how many times you have done a watching brief to the rear of a medieval street frontage rather than an evaluation or open area.
I recently attended the series of lectures at Rewley House on desertion and decline in later medieval towns. It didn't take long to realise that the missing ingredient in the lectures was generally excavation. Theories were not being tested, evidence not being gathered. It is quite easy to read a book from the early 1980s and find that the lack of evidence from excavation mentioned back then, for example on the growth of Saxon burghs, remains almost entirely the same.
I just spent the day on a large site within a medeival town. A crappy small service trench was being excavated across the probable line of the town ditch, through which a proper section(in which all layers were recorded) has never been dug. I found the one edge of said ditch and a large expanse of fill. I was quite pleased, showing my low level of expectations in this job. However, that was it and the trench was filled in after a whole 30 minutes. No one had thought to make it a condition of the large development that a proper archaeologcial trench should be excavated across the ditch because it was on part of the site where not a lot of ground disturbance was to happen and was not a necessary part of the development. But hey, it was only one of the very few places in the whole town where the ditch hasn't been built over. In my experience this is relatively typical and it is rare for a feature to be looked for or excavated 'because it's there'.
I recently attended the series of lectures at Rewley House on desertion and decline in later medieval towns. It didn't take long to realise that the missing ingredient in the lectures was generally excavation. Theories were not being tested, evidence not being gathered. It is quite easy to read a book from the early 1980s and find that the lack of evidence from excavation mentioned back then, for example on the growth of Saxon burghs, remains almost entirely the same.
I just spent the day on a large site within a medeival town. A crappy small service trench was being excavated across the probable line of the town ditch, through which a proper section(in which all layers were recorded) has never been dug. I found the one edge of said ditch and a large expanse of fill. I was quite pleased, showing my low level of expectations in this job. However, that was it and the trench was filled in after a whole 30 minutes. No one had thought to make it a condition of the large development that a proper archaeologcial trench should be excavated across the ditch because it was on part of the site where not a lot of ground disturbance was to happen and was not a necessary part of the development. But hey, it was only one of the very few places in the whole town where the ditch hasn't been built over. In my experience this is relatively typical and it is rare for a feature to be looked for or excavated 'because it's there'.